Sleep and plasticity
Sleep is important for brain development and memory, two processes that rely on changes in communication between neurons in response to experience. These changes in communication are possible via mechanisms that allow individual synapses to remodel, a process called synaptic plasticity.
Overview
We are interested in how the complex dynamics of sleep (i.e., oscillations, sleep stages) influence synaptic plasticity mechanisms at the cellular and molecular levels. We focus primarily on the physiology of synapses and dendrites and are particularly interested in the role of sleep spindles.
To address these questions, we utilise pre-clinical models and a range of different imaging, molecular, electrophysiological, and behavioural techniques in the rodent model.
Selected publications
Seibt J, Richard CJ, Sigl-Glöckner J, Takahashi N, Kaplan DI, Doron G, de Limoges D, Bocklisch C, Larkum ME. Cortical dendritic activity correlates with spindle-rich oscillations during sleep in rodents. Nat Commun. 2017 Sep 25;8(1):684. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-00735-w. Erratum in: Nat Commun. 2017 Nov 23;8(1):1838. PMID: 28947770; PMCID: PMC5612962.
Seibt J, Frank MG. Primed to Sleep: The Dynamics of Synaptic Plasticity Across Brain States. Front Syst Neurosci. 2019 Feb 1;13:2. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2019.00002. PMID: 30774586; PMCID: PMC6367653.
Peyrache A, Seibt J. A mechanism for learning with sleep spindles. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2020 May 25;375(1799):20190230. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0230. Epub 2020 Apr 6. PMID: 32248788; PMCID: PMC7209910.
